BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Dr. Ray L. Watts, a UAB senior vice president and dean of the School of Medicine, is the choice to become the next president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, according to multiple sources with first-hand knowledge of the selection process.

Watts, 59, was recommended by a search committee of over three dozen people, including university administrators, doctors, professors, Birmingham business leaders and trustees of the University of Alabama System. The sources who confirmed Watts’ choice included UA System trustees and UAB personnel.

There was no immediate response to an inquiry sent to Watts’ office seeking comment.

The committee will recommend Watts as its choice to UA System Chancellor Robert Witt, who is then expected to recommend Watts to the full board of system trustees at its meeting at UAB scheduled for early February.

Multiple trustees said that they expect Witt’s recommendation of Watts will be approved.

A native of Birmingham and a graduate of West End High School, Watts received his bachelor of science in engineering from UAB in 1976. In 1980 Watts was valedictorian of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Watts completed his internship, residency and fellowship training at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Before coming to work at UAB, Watts served a two-year fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and was a longtime member of the Emory University School of Medicine faculty in Atlanta. At Emory, Watts and colleagues built the internationally renowned Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Research and Clinical Center.

Watts returned to UAB in 2003 to work as the John N. Whitaker Professor and Chairman of the UAB Department of Neurology. Since 2005 Watts has also served as president of the UAB Health Services Foundation.

Watts was named dean of the School of Medicine in 2010.

In a 2011 interview with Birmingham Medical News, Watts was asked why after taking a degree in electrical engineering at UAB he changed directions and moved to the study of medicine.

“…I spent a summer working on a research project with some students from biomedical engineering, and that got me interested in biological systems,” said Watts. “They’re so much more complex than the linear systems I was studying. So that’s what led me to medical school, and to biomedical science.”

If approved by trustees, Watts will become UAB’s seventh president.

The school’s sixth president, Carol Z. Garrison, resigned in August after holding the job for 10 years.

UAB’s president leads an institution that has grown to become not only the largest employer in the Birmingham region, but one of the two largest employers in the state with more than 18,000 faculty and staff and over 53,000 jobs at the university and in the health system. UAB has an enrollment of almost 18,000 students. It’s estimated that the university’s overall annual economic impact approaches $5 billion annually.